“A Sort of Geek Dare” – Kevin Hearne on his Iron Druid Urban Fantasy Series
The Iron Druid Chronicles got started as a sort of Geek Dare. You know how geeks will sit around and throw out ridiculous hypotheticals to one another, like “What if Spock tried to make sense of a Doctor Who episode?” or “How many Jawas could you cram into a Volkswagen?” Usually you only have to throw out one or two of those per gaming session and you can spend all night arguing about them. Well, the hypothetical I threw out one night in 2008 was, “What if one of the old-school Druids were still alive in our modern world?”
The idea was immediately assaulted by my good friends on historical and biological grounds. “The Romans killed most of them and then St. Patrick finished them off,” I was told by Geek One. “And it’s generally agreed that humans don’t live for two millennia,” Geek Two pointed out.
I didn’t let it go, though. My research began the next morning, and I discovered that there were several methods by which someone could enjoy a very long life in the old stories of the Tuatha Dé Danann. That’s when I started thinking seriously about writing an urban fantasy novel. A truly ancient Druid walking among us, talking to his dog and shapeshifting like the old myths said they could? I couldn’t wait to write it! Atticus and his Irish Wolfhound, Oberon, were “born” right there.
I still had to figure out what happened to get Atticus out of Ireland, how he survived centuries of war and why he hasn’t saved all our forests. Further immersion in old Irish tales gave me a lead: I read of a magical sword named Fragarach that could cut through any armor. It was originally the sword of Manannan Mac Lir, god of the sea, but he gave it to another god, Lugh Lámhfhada, and Lugh gave it to the legendary first-century Irish king called Conn of the Hundred Battles. There is no record of Conn ever giving it back, nor of anyone using it after that time. Aha, I said to myself, now there’s a story waiting to be told.
If Atticus took that sword from Conn and the Tuatha Dé Danann wanted it back, that would explain why he had to flee Ireland and lie low. And when he finally gets tired of running and decides to make a stand against his old gods—well, that’s going to be a fight worth watching.
The Consistency Gremlin spoke up at that point and said if I was going to treat Irish myths like history, then I’d have to do it for all myths. All pantheons would be alive, all gods equally valid, just as their worshipers imagined them. Whoa. (more…)
It’s incredible when we look at how much Facebook, Twitter – and yes even the humble and now bizarrely relaunched MySpace – have changed our world and the way we interact within it, all in no more than a decade. It’s easy to see why some of the best science fiction has recently focused on the future of social media and technology in the hands of individuals, rather than governments or militant groups.
